How to Make Homemade Pretzels
I love a delicious soft pretzel. We can’t go to the mall without eyeing up Auntie Anne’s. I’ve always been curious about how to make homemade pretzels, but never got around to trying a recipe. Well, I got to take a class about making artisan pretzels at my local community college and I learned so much. Check out all of the tips I picked up!
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The Artisan Pretzel
First of all, go check out your local community college right now! I was so surprised at how many baking classes were available as affordable one day classes. You can read about some of the other classes I’ve taken like French Macarons, Alternative Baking, Cake Decorating, and more!
In this class, we were given four recipes for homemade pretzels to choose from. Bavarian style soft pretzels, sweet cinnamon braids, whole wheat pretzels, and sour dough pretzels. My partner and I ended up making the whole wheat pretzels and the sweet cinnamon braids. Both were delicious.
Homemade Pretzels
When you’re making homemade pretzels, there are a few uncommon ingredients like lye and malt syrup. Personally, I don’t keep either of these in my house. While these two ingredients give you a more traditional pretzel taste and appearance, you can actually use more common substitutions.
We decided to make these pretzels with ingredients we actually had at home. Instead of dipping the pretzels in a lye solution, we used a baking soda solution. And instead of malt syrup, we used molasses. In the end, these pretzels are a bit softer and have less of a bite, but they are still very tasty.
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Cooking with Lye
Pretzels are dipped in a caustic solution to give them that classic dark, chewy crust with a bit of bite. These solutions work by “burning” the pretzels as the solution evaporates in a very hot oven. Typically, lye is used here. It’s very weird to dip your food in what is essentially drain cleaner, but it is perfectly safe to eat after baking.
If you use a lye solution, be sure to wear a double layer of gloves. But if lye freaks you out or you just don’t feel like buying it just to make homemade pretzels, you can go the route that we did. A baking soda solution is a much safer alternative, though the end result is a bit pale.
Tips from Class
- By adding liquid to the bowl first, you don’t have to scrape as often.
- Keep your work space clean! As soon as it starts to get cluttered, take a minute to tidy up. This will make baking much easier.
- It can be difficult to maintain the pretzel shape when dipping them into the caustic solution. You can freeze the shaped pretzels for just a few minutes prior to dipping.
- An extremely hot oven is essential. Have your oven preheated for a full 30 minutes at 450℉ before baking.
Pretzel Making Method
As our instructor always mentions, it’s important to know and understand the different baking methods. Once you are familiar with them, you can bake almost anything without even having a recipe. For these homemade pretzels, we use the straight dough method. Add the liquids and fat, then the dry ingredients, then the salt, and mix. Boom. Easy.
More important than blindly following a recipe, it’s important to be able to understand the visual and textural cues. As the ingredients come together in the bowl you’ll observe the three stages of mixing, hydration, pick up, and development. In the development stage, gluten is forming which will give the finished pretzel its tasty chew.
You’ll know that the dough has enough gluten development when it is tacky, but not sticky. But you should also do a window pane test. Use a bench scraper to slice off a small piece of dough. Gently pat and pull this as thin as possible. If it forms a thin skin that doesn’t tear and you can see a light through, you are good to go!
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Shaping the Pretzels
For a traditional pretzel shape, you can try the mid air flip method that the pros at Auntie Anne’s do, or a simpler approach that is perfect for us mere mortals. You’re going to start off with a 3- 4 ounce ball of dough.
1. Roll your dough out nice and thin. It should be tapered at the ends and slightly fatter in the center.
2. Make an upside down U.
3. Cross the tips over each other pretty close to the end of the rope.
4. Lift and spin the end around once and bring the two tips to the thick part of the rope. Press to adhere.
5. You now have an upside-down pretzel. Lift it up and use your hands to slightly stretch out the shape and place it on your prepared baking sheet.
Pretzel Braids
I really enjoyed these pretzel braids because the insides were super soft. Plus they were so much easier to dip and maintain their shape. Start with 3 one ounce balls of dough.
1. Roll the balls out to a long thin rope.
2. Pinch the three strands together at one end.
3. Take one of the outside strands and cross it over the middle.
4. Take the opposite outside strand and cross that over the middle.
5. Repeat this process until you get to the bottom.
It helps to keep your strands far apart so that you have space to create the braid. Don’t wrap the braid too tightly as you want to just gently drape the strands across each other. Once you get the swing of it, this technique is quite easy. If the ends look ugly, you can always chop them off, but I don’t like wasting dough.
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But… Auntie Anne’s Looks Different
I know what you’re thinking. These homemade pretzels don’t look like the ones at the mall. Yeah. You’re right. If you really want that look, you’ll need to use a strong lye solution. This will give you that dark, delicious crust.
I love their buttery, greasy finish. Once they come out of the oven, brush the homemade pretzels with melted butter. Be careful not to knock the salt off. This still won’t be the same as a mall pretzel, but adding butter always helps!
Other Flavors
Our sweet cinnamon braids were so delicious and reminded us of a cinnamon bagel. We agreed that adding some chopped up raisins would be absolutely amazing. The raisins would add a bit of sweetness and a nice texture to the pretzel. Try throwing in a large handful of chopped raisins and let me know how it goes.
The whole wheat pretzel dough was so easy to work with and made incredible homemade pretzels. My partner and I agreed that making a whole wheat cinnamon raisin pretzel braid would be perfection. You can find the whole wheat pretzel recipe in the Bakes & Blunders Resource Library.
Enjoy!
Homemade pretzels are fun to make and so easy to experiment with. You could add dried herbs, dried fruit, cheese, or anything else you’d like to this dough. Enjoy this easy recipe and let me know what flavor pretzel you’d like to try!
Sweet Cinnamon Braids
Ingredients
- 16 oz water
- 1 Tbsp molasses
- 1 oz unsalted butter softened
- 2 Tbsps instant yeast
- 24 oz bread flour
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 Tbsp sugar
- 1 Tbsp kosher salt
- Sparkling sugar (for topping)
Baking Soda Solution
- 32 oz warm water
- 1 Tbsp baking soda
Instructions
- Add the water, molasses, and butter to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook. Then add the yeast, flour, cinnamon, and sugar. Add the salt to the side of the bowl, keeping it away from the yeast.
- Mix and knead the dough at a slow or medium- slow speed for about 7- 9 minutes. Finish kneading the dough by hand, adding a small amount of flour if necessary. The dough should be tacky, but not sticky.
- Shape the dough into a large ball and place into a bowl large enough for the dough to double in size. If you use the mixing bowl, just make sure there are no bits of dried dough in there. Cover and let the dough ferment for about an hour or until the dough has doubled in size.
- When the dough is ready, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Press and smack the dough down to remove the gas.
- Slice the dough in half to create a rough log of dough. With the help of an electric scale, scale the dough into 1 oz portions. Roll each portion into a ball and store under a clean kitchen towel or cling wrap to prevent the dough from drying out.*Create the balls by forming a C with your hand like you are holding a cup. Turn your hand in at a 45° angle over the 1 oz ball of dough. Roll your hand in the same direction (in or out, not both) to roll and shape the dough into a ball. Start with a bit of pressure, but as the ball forms, back off with the pressure. It takes practice.
- Let the 1 oz dough balls rest, covered, for 15- 20 minutes to let the gluten relax before shaping. While the dough is resting, preheat the oven to 450°F. The oven will need to preheat for at least 30 minutes before you begin baking the finished pretzels.
- Once the dough is well rested, take 3 balls and roll them out individually into long, thin strands. Make sure they are all the same size. Line the strands up and pinch the three together at one end. Braid the strands and place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.
- After all of the dough has been shaped, place the baking sheet in the freezer for 5- 10 minutes. This step is optional, but it will make it easier for the braids to hold their shape while being dipped.
- Combine the warm water and baking soda to create the baking soda solution. Whisk until the baking soda is dissolved. Dip the pretzel braids one at a time into the solution and then place them back on the baking mat. Sprinkle with sparkling sugar.
- Bake the pretzels for 14- 16 minutes, or until they are a light golden brown. Cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack to cool completely.
Notes
- Dip these in caramel or top with some frosting for a sweet treat.
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Colleen
Hi there! I’m Colleen, a novice baker with a passion for learning and improving my bakes… and blunders. On Bakes and Blunders, you can find all sorts of tasty recipes that range in difficulty, but most importantly, I’ll try to explain the reason behind important steps. If you know why a recipe works, you can tweak and adapt it to suit your unique tastes, and you’ll be able to reliably produce some very delicious treats. If you love baking and want to expand and grow your skills, or if you are a casual baker and just need some pointers, my blog is right up your alley! Join me on my baking journey and we’ll learn how to make more impressive recipes together.
2 Comments
kay
Will pass this recipe on to my Luke, he loves to bake bread! They look fabulous!
Colleen
I loved them! But I love carbs in any form 😉